All hell broke loose in our house at the weekend. There was a frightful row and we ended up hurling sharp, pointed missiles around the room with deadly inaccuracy.

I just happened to buy a darts board. It was my daughter's idea, honest.

It was not so much that I hung it on the back of a walk-in cupboard door in the kitchen that sparked off a heated debate. Neither was it the thousands of little holes that appeared in the door where we had missed the board. Even though they resembled a heavenly galaxy of scars, or the concentric drillings of a drunken woodworm, I promised they could easily be filled, sanded and painted once the fad was over.

What caused the trouble was that my wife actually won a game! She had reluctantly been conscripted to the oche, had to have the rules explained and even shown which was the sharp end of the dart.

Okay, so I'm no Eric Bristow. In our house you don't hear "one-nun-dead-and eighty!" You don't hear "treble-twenty, double-sixteen, tops". It's more like "three, outer rim, door jamb" and beware of ricochets.

But when my dear missus started to play, she revealed an accuracy obviously honed by regular pot-and-pan flinging over the years. After a couple of games she was hitting the board, then the doubles - then she won one.

Perhaps I shouldn't have asked where she had suddenly found a competitive streak. It may have sounded like sour grapes. But that's when the trouble started.

You see, we have agreed to disagree for years about competitiveness. I believe a human's primary directive is to compete. I will compete to be first in the road to mow the lawns each spring, fastest to spend my wages every month and be the most ruthless alien-killer on a Space Invaders game.

I will trample over the family to win at Ludo and kill anyone who ruins my chance to make a three-letter word at Scrabble.

I don't agree with cheating - unless there's money involved - but I am convinced we owe it to ourselves to be Number One and to prove it to all comers.

"It's only a game," quips my wife. So I get all steamed up and bluster: "Well what's the point of playing if not to win?"

Anyway, she said the other night, darts were dangerous. My childish riposte was that so were the javelin, shot and discus so why don't we ban the Olympic Games and all play ring-a-ring of roses?

Boxing can be replaced with non-contact pillow fighting; and motor racing will be performed by men equipped with just a steering wheel who are allowed to walk - not run - round Brand's Hatch while making little brum-brum noises with their mouths.

And while we're at it, we'll ban all school sports so that children don't have to be competitive and the tubby losers don't feel shamed. Pupils could exercise to the Russell Grant fitness video instead.

That's when I touched a nerve. School sports and gym lessons should be banned, she said. All PE teachers were nasty, wicked, cruel, heartless sadists, she said. "I'll never recover from trying to vault a wooden horse in the gym. I couldn't do it and my teacher forced me to try again and again. My teacher just laughed and it put me off for life."

Diplomat to the end, I didn't like to cause more of a family rift by asking whether she included my brother, Bob "Marquis de Sade" Hearld - a PE teacher for most of his life - in that catalogue of evil people.

Okay, pet. Sorry. I'll be serious. When we get bored with the darts board we won't buy a vaulting horse. Think of what we'll save on hay, straw and stabling.

So how about parallel bars from the kitchen ceiling? Or maybe we'll settle for his'n'hers jogging machines and see who can reach the safety rail first.

Updated: 11:57 Tuesday, January 24, 2006